Hi I'm currently looking at ways of improving the way we issue RAMS to our engineers and clients. Our current method of using our own templates is quite time consuming so I have been looking at what is available in the UK market such as RAMs App and Protecting.co.uk. I like the idea of having a cloud based system, but I'd like if anyone has any experience of this software in the real world.  

I have seen a number of companies use online or computer based systems to produce both risk assessments and or method statrments, I agree they are quick and easy to use and to some extent produce suitable documents.  In my experience they can become a tick box exercise.  My reason for this is that many of them will require the person to select a hazard and the system will then fill in a field or fields with a generic risk assessment.  This becomes the accepted assessment and it then becomes the accepted norm for all tasks.  I feel is not fully assessing the hazards and risks and do not fully address them and supply suitable control measures.  Like wise for method statements even when constructing or installing the same items every site will present different challenges and require different controls and methods of work. 

I also feel that risk assessments and method statements should be separate but cross referenced documents. The first being a legal requirement to assess and record the hazards and risks which will be encountered and the control measures that need to be put in place to sadfely complete the task.  The second is what it says an agreed detailed step by step method for doing the task. 

As for the intial question, yes you can use computer  based systems in place for your templates.  I agree that they do take more time to do.  In my mind it is time well spent and by creating manual documents there is the opportunity to think clearly about the hazards, risks and control measures and  to consider how the task will be undertaken.  It may save you a lot of time and effort later if something goes wrong. 

I do feel that at some point in the future someone will develop risk assessment/method statement softwear which by using AI will provide a system which can take account of the differences in a worksite and be able to provide both a suitable risk assessment and method statement.  

I understand that not everyone will see things that way that I do, but all I can say is that, this approach has served me well over the many years that I have been involved in occupational health and safety. 

So what you need is dynamic risk assessment process.

First you have a generic sort of risk assessment  which deals with the sorts of risk that you might expect to come across.

But when your guys go on site, they need to do a dynamic risk assessment which can have three outcomes:

1. The generic risk assessment covers what you will be doing, so proceed as normal.

2. There are other risks, but we can tweak the generic risk assessment to cover them.  This must be documented and fed back into the generic risk assessment.

3. There are new unforeseen risks that the generic risk assessment does not deal with and it is not possible to safely proceed with that work activity. Again you feed that back into the generic risk assessment.